Wednesday, 4 January 2012

Rising

Valhalla Rising (2009)

Finely got round to watching Valhalla Rising tonight and I'm very glad I did.
Its a fantastic piece of film making - Mystical, Meditative and Haunting.
Its the film between Nicolas Winding Renf's Bronson and Drive and contains elements of both.
Nicolas has said that he thought of Valhalla Rising as an acid film and its full of psychedelic imagery.
It has its own sense of rhythm,very little narrative and a mute hero who explodes from stillness into kinetic ultra-violence...Very similar to Drive.
It really felt like Herzog's Aguirre Wrath Of God and Nicolas shoots Scotland as stunningly as Herzog did Peru.
Morten Soborg's cinematography is beautiful and I love the films pallet and dream like dissolves.
You could also find echoes of Terrance Malick's work in this film especially Thin Red Line and The New World. Also shades of Apocalypse now, Hunger and Lars Von Trier's work.
Special mention for the moody throbbing soundtrack too.